Over the past decade Rachael Hale has become renowned throughout the world for her quirky and delightful images of babies and animals.

Rachael released her first book 101 Salivations: For the Love of Dogs in 2003, post book launch the 'Rachael Hale' brand started to grow and Rachael spent the next few years creating animal images for licensing. As well as appearing on literally millions of greeting cards, calendars, posters and stationery around the world, Rachael's images continued to feature in a number of bestselling animal books including: 101 Cataclysms: For the Love of Cats; Smitten: A Kitten's Guide to Happiness; Snog: A Puppy's Guide to Love; and more recently Rachael has turned her eye to babies with Baby Love published in 2008. Altogether her books have sold nearly 3 million copies in 13 languages.

Twelve years on, Rachael was getting bogged down with the relentless nature of studio work and realized that the way forward was to just do what she'd always wanted to do: work with animals in their own environment, in the wild, using natural light.

Having now left the studio for the field, change was something that inspired Rachael,

Now married, soon came the twin births of baby Charlize and the Rachael McKenna brand. The images Rachael creates are now published under her new name, Rachael McKenna, and she is no longer involved with the images and merchandise published under the Rachael Hale brand. _

Today Rachael, husband Andy and daughter, Charlize, live in a tiny village, in the Southwest of France.

In 2011, when Charlize was three months old, Rachael set off on her first assignment under her new name, from her long-time publisher, PQ Blackwell. As she says, "It was my dream job. Traveling through France while taking photos of beautiful cats in the character filled villages, cities and countryside of France."

Rachael's gorgeous new book, The French Cat, will be published in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, France, Germany and Japan in September 2011. Go to www.pqblackwell.com for more details, or www.amazon.com to pre-order a copy.

Rachael is now busy working on her next two books: Lunch in Provence, a sumptuous photographic journey of food and dining in Provence; and The French Dog, a companion volume to The French Cat.

Websites:

http://www.rachaelmckenna.com

http://www.babylovecollection.com/

http://www.pqblackwell.com/

http://www.twitter.com/rachaelmckenna

http://rachaelmckennaphotography.blogspot.com/